Swan Dive
by kelmeister
Summary: Immediately Post-ep for 5x07, "Swan Song." One shot, complete. A bit of fluff at The Old Haunt, as the gang celebrates their soon-to-be celebrity.


DISCLAIMER: Everything here is mine, except everyone in it.

xxxxxx

Rick opens the door with a grand flourish and steps aside to let them all in. Kate crosses the threshold and the scent of old wood polish and booze assaults her senses. She realizes this is the first time since the Hayes murder that she's been back to The Old Haunt. Rick apparently spends every waking hour that he's not with her or his family at the bar: a chorus of "Castle" reverberates through the small crowd of patrons. Rick grins, waves to his throng of admirers, and heads to the bar.

"Hey, Sean," he calls out to the bartender. Sean's a good-looking young guy, hair sticking straight up in the air, lots of tattoos. Sean throws up a hand, finishes drawing a stout, and heads over.

"Hi, Mr. Castle." Sean throws a small white towel over his shoulder. "What can I do you for?"

"Sean, I'd like you to meet my posse." Kate rolls her eyes while Rick makes the introductions. Next to her, Esposito and Lanie are trying not to look at each other and failing miserably. Ryan's just catching up, pulling Jenny along behind him. "I want you to take good care of them. They're all going to be stars!"

"As in 'movies'?" Sean tries to play up the suspense for his boss's benefit. Kate bets he makes a ton in tips.

"We're all going to be in a Holy Shemp documentary!" Rick can barely contain his excitement. He quickly explains the case, giving kudos to Ryan and Esposito. Sean smiles and nods.

"...So I want them well taken care of, Sean. Their drinks are on the house!" Rick throws up both arms as though he's conducting an orchestra.

"You've been wanting to do that for a while, huh," Kate smirks.

"Yeah, yeah I have," Rick nods. His grin is infectious. He jogs behind the bar and starts setting up drinks. He and Sean work in tandem, a well-oiled machine. Rick calls out a drink and Sean pulls out the liquor. Rick makes Jenny a Slippery Nipple shot, taking obvious pride in the giggle the name elicits. He points at Ryan, "Irish Car Bomb?" When Ryan frowns, Rick changes tactics, "Flaming Doctor Pepper!"

"I'll have Sex on the Beach," Javier says suggestively. He wiggles his eyebrows at Lanie.

"Nope." Rick emphatically shakes his head. "Not happening. Too girly." He waves toward the door. "Kindly take your business elsewhere, sir."

Lanie pipes up, "I'll have one, too." The group grows quiet. The tension is palpable. Lanie just shyly smiles and shrugs.

"Alright, then, two extremely unmanly drinks," Rick says, scooping ice into a glass.

Kate climbs up onto a barstool and watches Rick, fascinated. He's never mentioned The Old Haunt, not since the night they came here with Montgomery, and it makes her sad. Makes her wonder what else he has in his life that he doesn't share with her. She's lost in her thoughts when he finally steps in front of her, towel in hand.

"And what will you have, little lady," he asks, exaggeratedly wiping the bar's surface clean.

She glances behind her. The gang of four has retreated to a table nearby. She hears Esposito say, "Karaoke," but the noise in the bar drowns out the rest of the conversation. She turns back to Rick, studying him for a second. He looks at her expectantly, his blue eyes piercing. For a fleeting instant, she imagines fencers. Emboldened, she sits up straighter.

"Shot of Jack," she says. Rick is taken aback. She sees him startle. But he comes to, raises an eyebrow, and pulls out two shot glasses.

He retrieves the bottle of whiskey from the shelf on the wall. "I always knew some day you'd come walking back through my door," he drawls, pouring the dark liquid into their glasses. Kate's confused, wonders who he's talking to. "I never doubted that. Something made it inevitable. So," he sets the bottle on the bar, looks deep into her eyes, "what are you doing here in Nepal?"

Kate frowns, her question all over her face. Rick sighs. "_Raiders of the Lost Ark_?" He picks up his glass.

Kate picks up hers. "Sorry, I must have been watching _Nebula 9 _the day that was in theaters."

With matching smirks, they clink their glasses in a silent toast and down their drinks. Rick flips his shot glass over and slams it on the bar. Kate's still grimacing from the heat of the liquor as it burns its way down her throat. "You have to turn your glass over," Rick instructs, pointing at the small container in her hand. "That's how drinking contests work."

"What?"

"_Raiders of the Lost Ark_." He huffs in frustration, like he's trying to explain something to a small child, but she really is confused.

"Since when are we having a drinking contest?"

"Since you never did get to prove you could take me." He grins and pulls two new glasses from under the bar. She shakes her head, but her smile is sad, remembering the circumstances of her comment to him. Remembering him leaving the precinct without her, to spend the summer with someone else. As soon as he finishes pouring her drink, she throws it back, upends the empty glass and bangs it on the surface of the bar. She looks at Rick; his eyes are wide, he's obviously wondering what's come over her. He wordlessly empties his own glass, quietly adds it to the others.

She taps the bar top with a finger. Rick pours, but he's slower, considering something. She doesn't make a move to gulp down her drink, either. She massages the glass between her hands, warming it.

"So, what's with the bar," she asks.

"What do you mean?"

Kate takes a sip. "You never talk about it. I'd forgotten you'd bought it."

Rick gives her an embarrassed smile. "Yeah. Well, sometimes I forget I own it, too. I fired that thieving bartender right off the bat, you remember, Brian? The one you showed your goods to?" Kate sticks out her tongue. "Then I hired a really good manager, and he hired really good staff, and now the place pretty much runs itself." He points across the room. "Nikki and Rook went to Paris at that table over by the window there."

"You still write here?"

Rick sheepishly grins. "They make a mean Irish coffee." He leans in, whispers conspiratorially. "It also doesn't smell like you here. It's hard to write when I can smell you everywhere."

Kate chokes on her drink. A moment of silence passes between them. Kate can feel the booze working on her brain, loosening her inhibitions. Finally, the dam breaks. "Why were you so interested in playing me up to the film crew," she asks. She brings her gaze up to meet his.

"I told you," he says, dumbfounded. "I wanted them to see you in action."

"But even after I told you how much I valued my privacy." For some reason, she's gone from zero to sixty, and she's driving right into a fight. But she's been on edge for days, exhausted from having to keep her guard up. Her shoulders ache from the weight, and Castle's a convenient target.

God bless him, he sees where this is going. He sighs, throws his drink back, pounds the glass on the bar with his palm. She takes a sip of hers.

"Beckett," he exhales, carefully enunciating every word, "you are a good cop. But everything you do, it's behind those precinct doors." He extends a finger to touch her hand still wrapped around her glass, lightly stroking. "I want the world to know how extraordinary you are. Those guys could do it in a way I never could."

"But, Castle, I don't want it. I don't want notoriety, I just want to do my job."

"Beckett—" Rick's exasperated. She can feel it coming off him in waves. He plants both palms on the bar, braces himself for what he's going to say next. "Beckett," he says, boring a hole into her with his stare, "I'm proud of you. That's all. I'm proud, and I want you to get the recognition you deserve. I see how hard you work, the long hours. How good you are with victims. I just want other people to see it, too."

"But, Castle—" This conversation is getting away from her. It feels circular, they're repeating themselves, they've had this talk before, haven't they? She feels a heat creep onto her cheeks, he must think she's fishing for compliments. How does she explain what she feels when her head is swimming, when he's so close and so, so,_ sure of himself_. She shakes her head to order her thoughts, but it doesn't work, so she takes another sip to steady herself. Then she figures, what the hell, and dives in.

"Castle, it's just—you spend your time writing this character, Nikki Heat, and she's this idealized version of me. You write books about her, and then you spend time with me, and sometimes I think the person you think _I_ am is who you've made _her _to be." She pauses, taking a deep breath. She's never spoken these words before to anyone, not to Dr. Burke, or Lanie, or her father. This—this is one of her deepest fears, made manifest. "I feel—I feel like you've put me up on an impossibly high pedestal. I'm not what you think I am. I'm scared," she whispers, "you're going to wake up one morning and realize I'm not her."

Kate twists the glass in her hands. "I recognize parts of me in Nikki, and there's a little bit of Nikki in me," she laughs, "maybe more than I know, but I'm not some super woman—" She looks up to gauge Rick's reaction to her confession, but he's no longer there. Instead, he's come around the bar, heading straight for her. She twists in her seat to meet him.

He's in front of her; he reaches out and gently pushes her legs apart, stepping into the V, wrapping his arms around her, enveloping her. Kate stiffens, conscious of the bar full of people, conscious of her friends a couple of yards away. But they know, she thinks. They already know. So she relaxes into his hug. Rick cradles her face in his hands and kisses the top of her head.

"Do you remember," he asks, his breath tickling her ear, "when I was in lockup? When I told you that insane story about Tyson visiting me and threatening my life?"

"Yes," she murmurs.

"You remember how you told me you believed me? That you never stopped believing me?"

"Yes."

"Don't stop believing me." Rick pulls away to look into her eyes. It looks like he's trying to shoot laser beams of love into her, his stare is so intense and focused. It makes her smile. He brings a finger to her chin. "Kate, I love you. I know you, better than you think I do. I know you're not Nikki Heat. I don't want you to be Nikki Heat."

Rick pauses, then brings his lips to hers. His kiss is him softly asking her to trust him. "I love Kate Beckett," he murmurs, "I want Kate Beckett. I want Kate Beckett and all the baggage that promises."

He folds her into an embrace. "I'm sorry," he tells her, "you know I let my mouth get the better of me sometimes, huh." Kate chuckles. "I had the best intentions. I shouldn't have pressured you."

"I shouldn't have taken it out on you."

"But thank you for telling me." Rick kisses her temple. "Did we just fight?"

Kate looks up. "I don't know, did we? It didn't seem like much of one."

Rick pouts. "No make-up sex then?"

Kate slyly smiles. "I hate you and never want to speak to you ever again, you bastard."

Rick is shocked, but as Kate watches, understanding begins to dawn. "Oh," he hisses, "you can't possibly hate me as much as I hate you."

"Wanna try me?"

"Oh, it is so on!"

They share a laugh. Behind them, a loud cough. They turn to see Sean. "Mr. Castle," he says. He waves a thumb over his shoulder. "I tried to stop him, but he insisted."

Kate and Rick look where Sean is pointing. For the first time, they finally notice Esposito singing. He's dragged a karaoke machine out from some dark corner of the bar, and is crooning along to "Let's Get it On."

"I'll put a stop to this," Rick huffs, and stalks toward the detective. As Kate watches, amused, Rick argues with Esposito. He's pointing and waving excitedly. Esposito is calmly taking it all in. Finally, Esposito nods once, bends over, and fiddles with the machine. Rick yanks the microphone from Esposito's hands and grins triumphantly. The first bars of "Easy Lover" wail from the machine. As Kate watches in horror, the two friends throw their arms around one another and bellow the lyrics at the top of their lungs.

"Holy Shemp," Kate sighs. She swallows the last of her drink, and slams the glass on the bar next to Rick's. She doesn't hear it make contact over the sound of the screeching.


End file.
